Fitbit upgrade

Last year I upgraded my beloved Fitbit One to the (at the time) new Fitbit Charge. If you’ve read some of the other old posts on this site, you know that I am not a fan of wrist based activity trackers. I feel like not only do they read too many false steps based on hand movement, but if you’re, say, grocery shopping and pushing a cart around, you don’t actually seem to get credit for those steps. Maybe they all even out, maybe it’s not a big deal. I have come around to DC Rainmaker’s way of thinking, it’s not about the actual number on a given day, but about tracking trends in your activity level.

That being said, the band on my original Charge started coming apart, so Fitbit sent me a new one to replace it. I wore the new one up until I upgraded my GPS watch (more on that in a separate post) to one that I actually like wearing on a daily basis. I’m not one to wear two trackers on one arm (like my girlfriend does), so I decided to go ahead and completely remove the band off of the old Charge and carry it in my pocket as if it were a One. I have to say, it works quite well that way. I never used the notification or silent alarm options, and I’ve already covered my disdain for the sleep tracking of these things, so it works quite well as a pocket tracker. The only issue is the lack of clip. I’ve actually lost the tracker once during a 5k race when I moved my keys from the pocket the tracker was in. Fortunately, someone picked it up and set it someplace that I was able to find it later.

I do think that when this one does eventually die, I’ll go back to the One. Assuming that I stay with the Fitbit line. That’s probably a good bet considering that most of my friends also use Fitbits and the fact that about a year ago I also bought a Fitbit Aria scale. I like the company, I like their products and their support.

Speaking of the Aria scale, while I’m not super impressed with the body fat % calculations, the wireless uploading of the weight to the website is brilliant. Couple that with the website Trendweight and you’ve got yourself a nice way to keep an eye on important trends. Because as noted before, the actual numbers are less important than the overall trend.